Unlike the first round, which was split half and half between upholders of the climate faith and dissenters, this session looks to be much more one-sided, and therefore probably not so interesting.

Panel 1, at 9.30am:

Sir Peter Williams, Royal Society

Dr. Emily Shuckburgh, Royal Meteorological Society

Panel 2, at 10.30am:

Guy Newey, Policy Exchange

Jonathan Grant, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

James Painter, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford

The session explores a range of issues, including:

Attribution of the cause of climate change;

IPCC communication, media coverage and controversies;

Business and policy decisions in the face of uncertainty; and

National and international policy considerations.

The list of issues is intriguing, since it goes beyond the original remit of the review, which was mainly focused on the science and did not mention media communications (though policy was included).

The first two are scientists, though Emily Shuckburgh has also done some work on public opinion, co-authoring a report that found decreasing concern about climate change and decreasing trust. They will presumably follow the line set out in the written submissions from their organisations. The RS one is very dull, churning out all the key words “unequivocal”, “robust”, “wealth of evidence”. The RMetS submission is equally bland.

Graham Stringer is asking how accurately we can measure deep ocean temperature and how we can distinguish between natural and man-made warming.
Shuckburgh says there are fingerprints, patterns. Will anyone mention the missing tropical hot-spot?

Now discussing the weird error bars on fig TS 10. Shuckburgh just says they are ‘calculated separately’ and seems to get away with it.

Stringer is now asking about Antarctic sea ice. Shuckburgh said they don’t have confidence in the predictions of that.

Now on to the second session.
James Painter says most polls show a slight decline in public concern about climate, since the 2007 AR4 report.

Lilley is asking Jonathan Grant about the technical details of the science, aerosols etc, which is rather pointless, as he’s not able to answer them at all. It’s not clear why he’s here. Now Stringer is asking him about the response of business and industry and the costs of mitigation, which makes more sense.